I send these last messages in the name of the Athasian Survey Project. All will be explained soon…

———————————————–

I found myself stuck on the edge of the Gray, held by the presence of Boanhma.

“This makes for three times I’ve saved you from getting yourself killed, Eshmel!”

“Why even bother, Boanhma? What we’re fighting… it’s too powerful. I’ve already lost everything.”

“Oh dry up! Yes the world is doomed and so is everyone in it. They have always been doomed, from the moment they were born. Nothing lasts forever. Everything dies and is reabsorbed back into the land. Even the land itself dies and is reborn.

“Get over it! None of that really matters.

“Thinking about the end of our lives or our world is pointless and unhelpful. Prophecies have always behaved more like attempts to guide us towards a future rather than actual truth. All of us must do…all we CAN do… is try to make the lives of ourselves and those around us better, and let the future remain unwritten. If there is no destiny, no purpose to our existence…that does not doom us, it gives us freedom. As long as there is still life, as long as we still have agency, nothing can be guaranteed.”

I was at a loss for words. Perhaps I had been too taken in by the desperation of my situation, by the weight of my own memories of loss… by my own desire to die and join my loved ones. I was dead. But the world did not need to die with me. Perhaps the Doomspace prophecy didn’t have to be a foregone conclusion after all.

“Boanhma,” I finally said after a long pause, “you remain as harsh a wake-up call as any man could ever hope to receive. Thank you for that… Now what can we do to stop Negchar?”

A wily grin spread across her wrinkled face: “You still have that death wish?”

———————————————–

Negchar looked up in surprise at my sudden reappearance. Not just at the fact that I had managed to materialise inside his ritual room, but that I was here as a resurrected mortal human. The pain started the second my body appeared in that room. I felt like I was standing inside a stone oven. The skin on every part of my body exposed to the obsidian screamed. It was also suffocating – with so little ventilation the building might as well have been a black-glass coffin.

But I didn’t need long. And I was already focused on my source. I reached out with my mind. I probably didn’t even need to, as he was in my head instantly.

“Negchar. You and we are both trying to repair the world, to stop the Doomspace prophecy. But there is a better way.

“Yes, so many have been selfish, and have traded the world for their own personal gain. But for each person destroying out of selfishness, how many would turn away from destruction if they knew better? Much of humanity can and will destroy itself, but everyone shares that fundamental desire to survive. If we all refocus that energy on showing the ignorant and innocent there is a better way, how many would prefer that?

Negchar looked incredulous. “You would have me… trust all these fools with these tools? Human foolishness was the reason our world is crumbling in the first place. There wouldn’t be a prophecy were it not for human selfishness.”

Focusing on the Way to protect my body, I held my composure: “The prophecy is vague and may or may not come to pass. One man’s inevitable vision of destiny is another man’s fever dream of doomsday.”

He didn’t buy it. “Do you really think… these people will listen? Look at the Tablelands. These… petty god kings cower behind their walled-in gardens, still fearing a foe… that died years ago and not even trusting… the same generals they fought beside for centuries.”

I knew this wouldn’t be easy. But I wasn’t out of tricks yet. I held my trembling hands to my head, “You can see in my mind. Let me show you something.”

He shrugged, half smiling, and said “Go on, then.”

I sent him every missive I have created since first leaving Urik. Individual stories could prove his point, but on the whole, it showed how even in a world this worn out and close to ecological collapse, people were still trying. They wanted to survive, and even when they had very little, the basic desire to work together and help each other was immutable.

“…Change is slow”, I said, “but it is the only inevitable part of existence. But the desire to live is constant. The only way to get fallow ground to bear crops again is through care and working together. Relationships are the only way we can rebuild the world, and that trust must start somewhere.”

He paused for an agonisingly long time. I’m not sure if he was thinking or just watching me cook my mortal body to death… “You came all this way… throwing away your life, to tell me to trust humanity to fix the world on its own?”

He looked down for a moment, then smiled and laughed. It was a sound both unexpected and alien.

Shaking his head, he said “…Very well. You have your wish. I have an eternity with which to work. What is another millennia to wait? It shall be done.”

He presented the Crystals to my shaking hands, and I spoke the words to trigger our prepared teleport. As I was vanishing, I thought I heard him say “It would be… fun to be proven wrong for once…”

———————————————–

Just as I appeared, Boahnma and the leaders of The Nexus are there to catch me as I collapsed. It was all simply… too much. With my last breaths I pass on these visions I had with the Crystals.

And so my journey has come to an end. I had known this would be my last journey, and the risks were great enough that I had expected it would also be my last days on Athas. I wanted to ensure my final sacrifice had meaning.

I had lived my entire life by my father’s maxim: “In the end, relationships are the only permanent source of wealth and meaning in your life.” Every connection I had formed and fostered in this world was an opportunity to leave my own mark on the world for the better. Not through power projection or manipulation, but through affection and inspiration.

With my returning the artifact which could cripple or heal the world back to the hands of the Consortium, I now place my faith in that shared connection.

I place my faith in you, dear friends.

You have now seen in these recorded missives the state of our world, and understand what is at stake. You could make the choice to destroy this world, sending us spiralling into the crumbling land of the Doomspace prophecy. Or you could start us down the path of restoring our broken world, with many individuals taking one small step at a time to regrow what has been withered away.

It is a heavy responsibility to bear, but I am confident you will all adapt. You have before.

So, dear friends, with my last thoughts I wish you and your descendants as prosperous a future as you can possibly create.

Farewell. And may the moons, and your consciences, guide you.

Sources:

• Secrets of the Dead Lands
• Faces of the Dead Lands
• Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan